schlichting@NUSC.ARPA.UUCP (04/29/87)
My Laboratory is considering replacing our current wordprocessor(CTOS) with Wordperfect. It would be used both on a mainframe VAX 750 and several apples and IBM ATs. I'd appreciate comments on this system from anyone with experience with it. Thank you. C . Schlichting (Schlichting@NUSC.arpa) ------
god3@sphinx.uchicago.edu (Peter Godwin) (04/30/87)
I have used WordPerfect on Apple //e's and IBM PC's. It is truly a most powerful wordprocessing program. Though the Apple II version doesn't offer a few of the many features WordPerfect for the IBM and mainframes have, all in all it is an extremely good investment. The most impressive features for me are the footnoting, speller (and thesaurus for all but the Apple version), and the printer drivers, esp. the printer drivers which can be modified. The macro features are also impressive. If anyone has questions about WordPerfect, I would be glad to help. -- Peter Godwin | ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!god3 Univ. of Chicago Comp Ctr | x9.xpg@uchicago 5824 S. Kimbark Ave, #2419 | god3%sphinx@uchicago Chicago, IL 60637 | Phone #: 312-288-1816
ranger@ecsvax.UUCP (Rick N. Fincher) (04/30/87)
I have a Wordperfect question for you. When using the Apple //e version the system hangs after a spell check of a document that is more than 5 pages long. Do you know of a reason or cure for this? Also, once the document gets long enough to long enough to spool to disk, it will not print properly, except by printing one page at a time. Any insight on this? Thanks for the help! Rick Fincher ranger@ecsvax
myerst%si03.DECnet@ESDVAX.ARPA ("SI03::MYERST") (05/14/87)
I N T E R O F F I C E M E M O R A N D U M
Date: 14-May-1987 10:26
From: Terry L Myers
Username: MYERST
Dept: SCOP
Tel No: 5554
TO: _MAILER! ( _DDN[INFO-APPLE@BRL.ARPA] )
Subject: Word Perfect
I waited for the experts to answer, but nothing happened. So
here's my two-cents worth. Bill Dickson asked "anyone who knows anything
about word processors" about a word processor that would use all the memory
in a IIgs.
I recently bought Word Perfect for my IIe (128k, unenhanced). I
immediately had trouble running it. After it booted, I couldn't get it to
list files on either drive. Turned out I had a bad memory chip on my
extended 80-col card. (I guess Wizardry doesn't use the second 64k, so I
never used the expanded memory.)
After getting the bad chip replaced, it ran just fine, and I'm glad
I bought it. I had been using AppleWriter II before, and find Word Perfect
to be much more powerful. I have had some trouble trying to convert my
AppleWriter files to Word Perfect files (using the utility provided with
Word Perfect), but I found that calling my old files plain ASCII (instead
of AppleWriter) then editing to replace the old imbedded formatting
commands works well enough.
FEATURES
Word Perfect uses one disk for temporary files, so you aren't
limited by the size of your memory and you can recover if your kid trips
over the power cord. If you want, you can assign the temp files to a RAM
disk. (It even recognizes my second 64K as a RAM disk and lists it when I
ask what volumes I have in the drives.) It has special installation
instructions to make use of large memories, so it ought to work well with
the IIgs. (I vaguely remember hearing about a new version just for the
IIgs coming out soon. Is that right?)
It has all the usual features and easily handles headers/footers
(with the ability to define different ones for even and odd pages, if I
remember correctly.) It has footnotes, macros (easy to use, but possibly
hard to debug if you make big ones), and a 50,000-word dictionary. It is a
what-you-see-is-what-you-get word processor. It reformats
semiautomatically or all at once on command.
LIKES AND DISLIKES
A bad part of the what-you-see-is-what-you-get display is the way
it handles lines over 80 columns wide. I typically set up for 12 pitch and
1.25" margins, so I have margins at 15 and 90. That's only 76 columns,
but Word Perfect displays the blank columns on the left until you get far
enough to the right that it can jump over to display the right half of the
line. It never shows the whole line, even though it could if it wouldn't
treat the left margin as important text.
The solution was not difficult. I just created a macro to shift
both margins left 10 when I want to edit and one to shift right 10 when I
want to print. (You can display all the hidden codes, and you can search
on codes, also, so the macros were trivial to create. I saved them as
open-apple commands so I wouldn't have to call for the macro and type in
the name. Nice feature.)
When I changed from continuous-form paper to single sheet, the
printer started with an unexpected reverse vertical tab. After getting the
margins just right in drafts on cheap paper, I was a little upset when it
suddenly changed rules on me. Changing the printer configuration to
another controller card solved the problem. (You can define three printers
at once and change between them easily.)
The spell checker is one of the most useful I've seen short of a
main-frame. It has a short list of very common words that it checks before
the main list, it checks in context, it suggests corrections, and it allows
look-ups. It's easy to add words to either the short or long list, and it
even has some proper names. (I was surprised when I found it had Aztec in
the dictionary, but when it corrected Descartes for me, I was really
impressed.)
A minor point that I find useful: when it lists files on a volume,
it always sorts them alphabetically (with creation and update dates, plus
size, etc.)
DISCLAIMER OF RESPONSIBILITY
Lest I be accused of publishing my reminiscences here, let me point
out that questions for general comments on Word Perfect usually go
unanswered. As I pointed out in the beginning, I waited for postings from
the people who know what they're talking about before I put this in.
Anyway, I hope this rambling review and collections of beginner's
impressions helps those who are thinking of buying Word Perfect.
Terry Myers
Hanscom AFB
Expert in Inverse Artificial Intelligence
------TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.ARPA (05/15/87)
You may remember my having posted some comments on the IIGS version of WordPerfect awhile ago. I had some trouble with it and have been in several long conversations with the very helpful people at the company. It appears that most of my trouble is because there were some bugs in the earlier releases of the current version; they are sending me the most recent one now. I have also been promised that shortly (month or two) there will be a version that supports the mouse AND most of the features that are standard with the IBM version and that recent purchasers will get free upgrades to that. They admitted the advertizing copy is wrong: the IBM and Apple files are not completely compatibile -- the IBM version supports a much richer variety of footnote formats & the Apple version doesn't recognize those codes. The conversion between them should be fairly simple and the fellow I talked was going to see if he could get a copy of the specs so I could write a conversion program. Given all that, my only complaint is that displaying text on the GS is slower than one would like because it uses the super-hi-res graphics display rather than the text display (so it can show underlines and boldface on the screen.) This makes scrolling around a document somewhat annoying -- but then I noticed that 4.2 on my IBM version was noticeably slower than 4.0!
ranger@ecsvax.UUCP (Rick N. Fincher) (05/19/87)
Terry's message is very informative. I feel the same way about Word Perfect as he does. It is a good package. One gotcha that stumped me, though, was its erratic behaviour after copying it with the file copy routine on the copy II Plus disk. Word Perfect is not protected but apparantly there is a problem when you try to copy it with anything but the Apple filer (which is included on the disk). The Tech support folks told me that Copy II Plus doesn't copy some of the files in the extra features menu properly. These include spell checking and printing. Going back and using their utilities has evidently solved the problems I was having. I'll keep you posted. Rick Fincher ranger@ecsvax
CC004019@BROWNVM.BITNET (Christopher Chung) (07/11/87)
I just received my Wordperfect 1.1 for the //e, release H, and can't seem to get it to work with my printer interface and printer. I have a Tymac Tackler and an Okidata 92(std). I believe the problem lies with the interface card. It doesn't seems to print correctly. I tried to print printer.test and some lines come out too long and some lines print on top of each other several times. Somehow wrong codes are being sent to the printer. There is no real listing for the Tackler but there is one for the PPC-100. I switched my interface card into that mode and then nothing prints at all! I called wordperfect and spend over an hour on the phone with them trying things out, but still no results. They said they would get back to me when they "check it out." But who knows how long this will take??? Anyone have this interface and has gotten it to work with wordperfect? If so please tell me what interface you chose, etc. Thanks, Chris